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Members and coordinator for each partner

INRIA

INRIA, the national institute for research in computer science and control, is operating under the dual authority of the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Industry. The Institute is dedicated to fundamental and applied research in information and communication science and technology (ICST), and plays a major role in technology transfer by fostering training through research, diffusion of scientific and technical information, development, as well as providing expert advice and participating in international programs. INRIA's missions are ``to undertake basic and applied research, to design experimental systems, to ensure technology and knowledge transfer, to organize international scientific exchanges, to carry out scientific assessments, and to contribute to standardization''. The Institute's research is structured around small autonomous teams throughout nine research units. http://www.inria.fr/

INRIA Rennes Bretagne Atlantique is one those units. The research group involved in the project is Dionysos (Dependability, Interoperability and PerfOrmaNce analYsiS of netwOrkS) group. Its goal is the identification, the conception or the selection of the most appropriate architectures for the implementation of communication services, as well as the development of tools (computing tools, mathematical tools) in order to perform these tasks. Dionysos is a group created less than one year ago and regroups around 20 people, among which 7 permanent researchers.

INRIA has acquired an expertise and visibility in pricing issues in telecommunications. Bruno Tuffin has indeed (since starting working on it in 2001) published 10 journal papers and 19 conference papers in this area. He has also supervised 3 thesis and co-organized international conferences related to that topic (as well as made several invited presentations). He is a management committee member of European COST action ECON@TEL. He coordinated an INRIA project devoted to pricing, called PRIXNET, in 2003-2004, and was involved in specific actions of Euro-NGI European Network of Excellence. While most of the work was on the monopolistic case, he is switching to the more realistic oligopoly. He therefore will bring his expertise in pricing issues, telecommunications performance evaluation and modelling in general, the main topic of the group at INRIA.

Telecom Bretagne

Created in 1977, TELECOM Bretagne is one of the most prestigious graduate engineering schools ("Grandes Ecoles") in France. It is a public institution, under the aegis of the Ministry for Industry and is a member of the Institut TELECOM. The college trains future professionals for careers in industry, services and research. TELECOM Bretagne has two campuses (Brest and Rennes) with an excellent teaching record and internationally-renowned research activities. One of its greatest successes has been turbocodes for which Prof C. Berrou won the Marconi Prize in 2005. It also has a large network of academic partners, in France and abroad.

Founded in 1992, the "Networks, Security and Multimedia" Department (RSM), that will be involved in the project, is located at the Rennes campus of TELECOM Bretagne. The teaching and research activities of the RSM Department cover all fields of networking, with emphasis on IP technologies, mobile networks and network security. It has 13 permanent members.

TELECOM Bretagne has developed an expertise in the domain of network pricing and game theory since 2002. Patrick Maillé defended his PhD thesis on game-theoretic studies of auction mechanisms for network resources in 2005; he is the author or co-author of several articles on network pricing that were published in scientific journals (IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Netnomics, RAIRO-Operations Research) or presented in international conferences and workshop (Infocom, MSWiM, ICQT...). In 2006, Patrick Maillé spent 6 months at the Columbia Business School (Columbia University, New York, USA) to work with Nicolas Stier-Moses on the problems linked to user selfish decisions and regulation consequences in terms of performance (the so-called Price of Anarchy) in transportation networks. This experience brought him a good knowledge of the performance considerations and analysis methods in non-cooperative settings, that will be particularly useful for the Work Package 4.

France Telecom R&D

First leading Research & Development centre in Europe in the telecom sector, France Telecom Research & Development is one of France Telecom's assets for its worldwide strategy of expansion and consolidation in all major markets of the telecom sector. With more than 3,400 engineers, researchers and technicians spread in 14 sites in Europe, North America and Asia, France Telecom Research & Development is implemented at international level that enables cooperation with influent industrial groups, the international scientific community and regulatory bodies.

Mustapha BOUHTOU a researcher engineer expert on operational research and optimization applied to the management of telecommunication networks (planning, traffic engineering, pricing and economics) and one post-doctoral student. Mustapha BOUHTOU is the manager of France Telecom research project on operational research and optimization. He also was involved in many internal and external collaborative projects devoted to pricing and competition (PRIXNET, ACTRICE...). He has about ten published papers on revenue management and optimal pricing in telecommunication networks.